1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to physical characterization of particles and, more particularly, to characterization of three-dimensional (3D) shapes of nanometer-sized particles from two-dimensional (2D) images of the particles.
2. Description of the Related Art
The performance of heterogeneous catalysts is highly dependent on their physical properties, including pore size, surface area and morphology of the carrier, and size and weight of the active catalytic components. As a result, techniques for characterizing the physical properties of heterogeneous catalysts become important when assessing their performance. An article by J. Liu, entitled “Advanced Electron Microscopy Characterization of Nanostructured Heterogeneous Catalysts,” Microscopy and Microanalysis, Vol. 10, pp. 55-76 (2004), discusses various advanced electron microscopy techniques used in characterizing model and heterogeneous catalysts, including transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
It is understood in the art that the shape of the catalyst surface on which catalysis is carried out plays an important role in determining the performance of the heterogeneous catalyst. U.S. Pat. No. 6,746,597, for example, teaches that the crystal surface [111] of a noble metal catalyst material is selective for hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions. However, as the size of the catalyst materials have decreased to nanometer levels, it has become difficult to characterize the shape of the catalyst materials.
There have been some attempts to characterize the shapes of catalyst materials at the nanometer levels. An article by T. Ahmadi et al. entitled, “Shape-Controlled Synthesis of Colloidal Platinum Nanoparticles,” Science, Vol. 272, pp. 1924-1926 (June 1996), discloses a method in which 3D shapes of the particles were determined by tilting the samples in the TEM. An article by Y. Sun et al. entitled, “Shape-Controlled Synthesis of Gold and Silver Nanoparticles,” Science, Vol. 298, pp. 2176-2179 (December 2002), discloses another method in which 3D shapes of the particles were determined by taking an SEM image of a sample at a tilting angle of 20°.
The methods for characterizing the shape of catalyst materials described above have some limitations. The method employed by T. Ahmadi et al. appears to require tilting and enlargement of each of the nanoparticles being analyzed. Such a process would be too time consuming in practice, especially when a large number of nanoparticles that are less than 5 nm are present. The method employed by Y. Sun et al. addresses tilting of very large nanoparticles (˜100 nm) that resemble almost ideal metal cubes. For much smaller size nanoparticles having a number of different non-ideal possible shapes, shape characterization becomes very difficult with existing methods. In fact, the article by J. Liu explains that even for model supported nanoparticles, it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain statistically meaningful results on the shape distributions of the metal nanoparticles.